


your soul is blowing apart

by patrocles (littlelionvanz)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Background Relationships, Emotional Baggage, Finger Sucking, Hand Jobs, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26537224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionvanz/pseuds/patrocles
Summary: “Do you want to kiss me, Sebastien?” Yusuf’s eyes were shining and so very beautiful. “I would like to kiss you. And I think you would like it very much.”Sebastien swallowed thickly, shaking his head, “I don’t think I could stop.”Yusuf’s smile flooded him. “Is that a promise?”This was their dance, overdue.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	your soul is blowing apart

**Author's Note:**

> this year was terrible but the old guard happened, so there's that. i haven't written anything in about a year, so hopefully it doesn't show. this is for [my babe](https://iwaiko.tumblr.com/) who beta'd this, my partner in all things and especially this insane descent into madness. 
> 
> the second working title was (phoebe bridgers screaming at the end of i know the end), because that's really the essence of booker innit. 
> 
> [i made a playlist for your listening pleasure. ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ZhjY5cvAvAenPABoqaleF?si=gULo1t-_S1q8mK9nwVYFtg)

Sebastien never felt safer anywhere else in the world than in the palm of Yusuf’s hands. Nothing grounded him so completely, but it was impossible to stop the shame that crested and engulfed him. He stupidly felt like apologizing, to make some excuse and push him away. All for wanting, for craving so desperately to always be touched by Yusuf and for having no reason to deserve it. He was poor, impoverished with nothing to offer this man in return except the surety of a bad investment. 

But jesusmaryandjoseph, when Yusuf cupped Sebastien’s face and brought their foreheads together and Sebastien could feel Yusuf’s breath on his own lips, it was impossible to do anything except be held, let alone push him away. 

“Libretto,” Yusuf whispered, “where are you? Tell me where you are, I want to find you.”

Where was he? Obvious awareness supplied Sebastien that he was in a dimly lit flat, in a tucked-away corner of Aksaray. Beckoned here by a single text only a full-day prior. Yusuf’s mission, accomplished. It didn’t occur to him until the second he stepped through the threshold that it had been their flat once before. The first mission. Again, at Yusuf’s instruction to follow. Modernized and remodeled and only the shell of the former place, but the same in all the ways that mattered.

That Yusuf remembered and knew Sebastien did too, was everything. 

Sebastien felt something in his throat constrict and loosen and tighten again with a certain stinging when he heard the old nickname from so many years ago. Sebastien had been sad, Yusuf had been teasing, and it was raining here in Istanbul. 

He didn’t think Yusuf knew that he liked it, secretly.

There was no teasing now, Yusuf wouldn’t dare. He was the best of them.

“I don’t know,” Sebastien said after a moment, deciding towards honesty as the path forward.

It felt like what Yusuf wanted. 

His hands were warm, leaning towards hot, when they moved to run through Sebastien’s hair. It was swept back from shielding his eyes and hands settled on either side of his neck. There was no choice but to look at Yusuf now. 

Yusuf had him, every cellular molecule of him, forever. 

When Sebastien realized there wasn’t a mission, that he’d dropped everything and came from Santiago for no reason, there was annoyance at the vague answers. He nearly said: I can’t be alone with you. But Yusuf beat him to it, grabbed his hand and asked him to stay. 

“Do you want to kiss me, Sebastien?” Yusuf’s eyes were shining and so very beautiful. “I would like to kiss you. And I think you would like it very much.”

Sebastien swallowed thickly, shaking his head, “I don’t think I could stop.”

Yusuf’s smile flooded him. “Is that a promise?”

This was their dance, overdue.

He didn’t give Sebastien time to think about it, lest he found cause to excuse himself and disappear across a national border before Yusuf could catch up. 

Sebastien yielded to Yusuf’s mouth in a way that almost surprised him, that terrified him. It was the sort of kiss, wet and warm and perfect as it was, that solidified the very hidden truth in the pit of Sebastien’s stomach that went neglected for so many decades: that Yusuf could do anything to Sebastien, and not only would he allow it, Sebastien might even beg for it if it pleased his dearest friend. 

The rush of it made his knees give and Sebastien remembered there was a bed behind him. The mattress squeaked with the sudden weight of the man. Their mouths were pulled apart as Yusuf remained standing, but fixing himself between the open space of Sebastien’s knees. 

Hands remained on him though, palms searing through the flesh of his throat and collarbone and coming to hold the back of his head. If Yusuf was worried about losing Sebastien’s attention, he needn’t have been. There was nothing in the world except him and this. Sebastien wanted nothing else and could die like this with not a single regret to his name. 

With Yusuf standing above him, Sebastien suddenly felt small in a way that was not easily achieved but not wholly unwelcome. 

The small lamp on the far side of the room didn’t fully illuminate their space but cast off Yusuf’s face in such a way that made Sebastien’s head feel numb. He thought he’d mastered the art of being unsurprised by this man’s face so many years ago. That there was nothing else to be caught off guard by. He’d seen Yusuf in so many stages of hair length, wild or buzzed, his chin naked or hidden behind a beard (which was his favorite at present). 

But each presentation made Sebastien feel boyish and annoyed with himself. 

Sebastien realized wildly how Yusuf looked so much as he did the first time they were here, save for the lack of a crisp white shirt and suspenders. 

He didn’t know what to say now, if speaking was even allowed without being prompted. He’d die for a final time before overstepping his bounds. 

Instead, Sebastien looked at Yusuf again, waiting and waiting, for permission or a request or something.

Yusuf offered smiles freely but Sebastien still didn’t feel deserving, not before and especially not after. It didn’t feel right that something so perfect would be given to him. He had been making it a priority as of late to not give in to deprecation, that it was unbecoming and unwanted, but surely this was an exception. 

“You’re an interesting man, Sebastien,” Yusuf said, voice soft as paper. “You are so very very much.”

“Very much what?”

“A number of things. But right now, you’re surprising.”

Sebastien asked the question in the tilt of his head.

“Surprising that if I touch you just here,” Yusuf illustrated his point by touching the base of his throat, “you’re like a sandcastle. It would take very little to make you crumble.”

Sebastien hated that it was true. But Yusuf did it anyway, as if to prove a point, fingers trailing the lines and tendons up to his chin and settling on his bottom lip. 

His mouth fell open as if it were a bone-deep instinct, and embarrassment consumed him like white fire. 

Sebastien sobered in an instant, straightening himself out of the trance of Yusuf’s eyes. 

“Still afraid of what you desire, Libretto?”

Sebastien shook his head. He didn’t know what game Yusuf was playing suddenly, but he didn’t know the rules and nothing felt fair. 

“Fear is nature’s greatest gift,” Sebastien said nonsensically, “fear keeps us alive.”

“I don’t think nature’s rules really apply to us, Basti.”

Sebastien felt defiant on purpose. “You know what I mean.”

“If we’re being honest, I don’t think you know what you mean.”

“I’m saying I’m terrified, that one misstep would be the end of me. Does it please you to know that? That my heart only beats if your hand is around it?”

Yusuf grew quiet then, letting his hands fall to his sides as if rejected. “It breaks me.”

Sebastien knew he loved Yusuf in a way that was different and not allowed many many years ago. It angered him then, such a cruel thing to be given. It followed him everywhere like a shadow, mocking him incessantly. 

And he did his best to swallow it whole, hide it from everyone, keeping his place neatly away and apart. It was not Yusuf’s fault and it was not Yusuf’s responsibility that Sebastien coveted what he should not. That in honest friendship, Sebastien felt a longing that made his entire body hurt.

“I don’t know what to do, Yusuf,” Sebastien admitted. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Want,” Yusuf said in an exhale. “Just want. I need to see.”

“Will you reject me?”

“I will love you. As I always have.”

Sebastien reached forward, pulling at the belt that held Yusuf’s jeans in place. It all came undone easily and with an efficiency that made Sebastien quietly proud of himself. 

Yusuf said want and this was the first thing to come to mind. 

Sebastien found himself coming down off the bed and to his knees on the wooden floor. Yusuf felt towering in a way that felt right. 

He was staring at the hair of Yusuf’s stomach that disappeared beneath the waistband of his boxers when fingers began tilting Sebastien’s head upward. 

Yusuf opened his mouth slightly, with the added raise of eyebrows that told Sebastien he was meant to follow the unspoken instruction to imitate. 

He did so without a second thought to make him hesitate and he was gifted with Yusuf’s fingers filling his mouth.

All the noise that Sebastien hadn’t realized was there was immediately silenced. Like closing a door with a party on the other side. Everything was so startlingly quiet that he knew the moan that rippled up from somewhere in his throat was indeed him and that if he heard it, Yusuf did too. 

It surprised him more than anything that he was capable of such a sound. Even in the many years ago when he has been someone’s lover— in marriage or for an hour— Sebastien was steadfast in his steely silence, unsure of the point of additional pomp and circumstance. 

But now it made sense. It simply felt good to receive this from a beautiful man. From Yusuf.

The fingers were deft and prodding, rolling around his tongue and encased in heat, with Sebastien swallowing around them. Yusuf pulled them out slowly before pushing in again before Sebastien could worry that it was over already. 

The act felt so base and unlike what Sebastien ever thought he wanted before now. In crude terms, Yusuf was using his mouth, and the bliss came from allowing him.

From a faraway place, Sebastien was in a mud-soaked field in France. A bullet to the head sent his vision black. The death wasn’t very long, gunshots usually weren’t, but life didn’t come back to him until the mud that clogged his windpipe was dug out from his throat and then his eyes. There was some pained retching involved and the horrible taste that followed, but above him, cradling him among the rain and gunfire, was Yusuf. Sebastien was no poet, nor did he have a clue about what it made him feel, but he still thought about it until the stock market crashed.

“Open your eyes,” a voice said in a hush.

Sebastien felt bleary and drunk and what he distantly recognized as arousal in his veins. He did as instructed, blinking a few times to clear his vision before settling on Yusuf whose eyes were dark and hooded in a way that had never been directed at him before. 

He knew pieces of what arousal looked like on Yusuf. Fragments by virtue of being in the vicinity of he and Nicolò at the wrong time. They, of course, had always been respectful of those around them, forever cautious about displaying their spousal affections in a way that wouldn’t create discomfort for others. But despite their intentions for propriety, they were still men and not immune. Nicolò’s cheeks would pinken almost delicately so, as he worried at the imaginary moustache above his lip. Yusuf was incredibly serious in a way that anyone else would mistake for anger. But following his line of sight to his husband, all would be made clear. 

Being the object of this now, Sebastien felt caught in a snare. What would usually come next, nature illustrated, is the gory violence between prey animal and beast. 

But instead, Yusuf retracted his fingers from Sebastien’s mouth and said sweetly, “Up with you now.”

He stood, obediently, ignoring the ache of his knees. A smile was there to greet him when he reached his friend’s eye line.

Yusuf wasted not a moment before fitting his hands under Sebastien’s thick sweater and shirt, pulling both up and off from accommodating arms. 

The clothes were tossed aside and matched with Yusuf’s own only a moment later. 

Sebastien felt more than he saw, hands not his own undoing the buttons and zipper of his own pants. Yusuf kept his gaze, holding it steadily, as he pushed the denim down below his waist. 

Wildly, Sebastien found himself wondering if Yusuf undressed Nicolò this way— if he took his time when they were afforded it. If Yusuf kissed the newly uncovered bits of skin as he went until there was nothing left between them. Or if it were the other way around, with Nicolò reducing Yusuf to a pliant mess with unspoken instruction to be still.

He knew he should have felt guilt or shame or something akin to it, pondering the sexual habits of his best friend and that man’s husband. But for once he couldn’t will the feeling to come, no matter where he looked for it. 

“Will you lie with me, Sebastien?” Yusuf said when both men were completely bare in both flesh and spirit. There was a honeyed softness to his voice that almost sounded so much like a song Sebastien once knew. 

The bed creaked beneath their combined weight, Sebastien lying on his back and Yusuf settling next to him, above him. 

Everything about this room and the men inside it was so changed by time-- eroded away by the years and remade over and over again. But there was so much still the same. The placement of the bed under the window, the floorboard that squeaked by the front door, and Sebastien still the progeny. 

What came next was more than Sebastien’s brain could register or make sense of. Arms encasing him around his chest and from around his shoulders, muscled legs slotting between each other, Sebastien gripping Yusuf’s side helplessly, the burning around his mouth that came from Yusuf’s beard as they kissed. 

It was strangely pleasant from the newness of it all, but distantly he knew he would have different opinions about beard burn the next day. There were a number of times he’d seen the fresh evidence on Nicolò, fading within moments, uncomfortable but unwilling to complain. 

The first touch of Yusuf’s hand on Sebastien’s dick made two realizations incredibly obvious: it had been several lifetimes since anyone had been allowed to touch him, and he was harder for it than he had probably ever been in his life. Not since the first death anyway. It had only just occurred to him to be grateful that Yusuf was so much older than he was, with so much expert skill in the art of touching other men. 

Sebastien was panting within moments, as if he were green and had just discovered his sister’s expensive charmeuse glove for the first (and last) time. 

He barely realized it was happening until he felt alone on the bed and refocused his eyes to see Yusuf having moved down Sebastien’s side. He was stroking his thigh and kissing his stomach and lower pelvis near where it met with his groin. 

“What a man you are,” Yusuf said admiringly, “like an aurochs. Some fabled hero, slayer of men.” 

Sebastien knew he was red all over. The praise slid over his skin in such a way that he couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. Yusuf was stroking his stomach, his legs, as if to let Sebastien know that he’d meant it and that yes, he was not addressing this to anyone else but Sebastien.

“But you’re really very gentle, aren’t you, my little book?” 

Yusuf laid his cheek on Sebastien’s stomach, one hand idling around his chest, another simply holding his dick between finger and thumb. His beard tickled the skin, and Sebastien never wanted Yusuf to leave.

“I don’t know how you see that in me,” Sebastien said with a boyish shrug. 

Yusuf grinned wide. “It’s the most honest thing about you, Sebastien.”

He did not explain further, he didn’t need to. 

Perhaps he was right, Yusuf would have no reason to lie to him. Sebastien had steeled himself as some unreadable, mysterious creature, lost beyond recognition. For some many years, it was a comfortable existence, but it was a hollow one. Not to mention a lie. There was no mystery in what was clearly anger, sadness, in the deadly cocktail that was that festered wound. 

And then this? Whatever was left at the bottom of the well. Sebastien couldn’t tell if it had always been there—not that he could remember—or was newly forged due to time and circumstance. 

The part of him that wanted this. Not just the primal act of being with another man, that much could have been satiated decades or centuries ago with far less emotional turmoil. (And perhaps it might have, as his recollection of those times were spotty at best). 

But this specifically—being at the whim and mercy and, (his mind choked on the word), control of Yusuf. Another word supplied itself and made Sebastien flush hotly. 

Sebastien had expected a great rush of action. He did not anticipate the sudden stillness nor the way Yusuf began to hum and how it vibrated through Sebastien’s skin as if the man were a cat, content and lazy. It was hard not to suddenly think about just how long he and Yusuf had known each other. How many long years they spent fighting, laughing, even at their closest. 

It was miraculous to think that Sebastien had survived so long without this. Ever the survivor he was. 

Yusuf was studying him and Sebastien was doing so in return. In the way the orange glow of lamplight curved around Yusuf’s back and across his cheekbone, Sebastien saw Rembrandt, Carravagio, and Baglione. What the masters were searching for, spent their lives arduously trying to capture, was, in fact, the man before him. 

He was not trying to be poetic on the matter, to be as cliche as to simply compare Yusuf to a piece of art, but there was something divinely satisfying about the scene before him. This sought-after feeling levelled him. 

His mind drifted to that autumn in 1831, to the awkwardness of being alone with Yusuf for what had to have been the first time. Of being so unsure of how to speak, how to act around this man who was so far from everything Sebastien thought a man was capable of being. Yusuf wasn’t patient then, not with what he deemed Sebastien’s personal failings that needed correcting if they were going to work together. He remembered the ignorant questions and comments that even today made his insides curdle— that he was ever so ignorant. But mostly Sebastien remembered the snap, like a shock of cold water in those quick, but not untrue statements. It wasn’t merely Yusuf’s audacity that alarmed him, but that Sebastien never felt so small in someone’s eyes. 

Did Yusuf know it strangely made Sebastien love him? If he didn’t know the name of the feeling then, there was the seed of it at least. The reality of how much it would hurt later for Yusuf to look at him and feel nothing. 

“How long has it been since you’ve let anyone touch you?”

Sebastien shook his head, suddenly shamed. He didn’t expect the directness, but with Yusuf, there was nothing else.

“Did you not want to?”

“It was easier not to.”

“Easier being lonely?”

Sebastien thought a moment, about the predicament of his existence. “One-night stands weren’t going to fix this particular melancholy. Perhaps it would’ve made things worse.”

“How so?”

“To have a sip of something and knowing it would never last till sunrise. That this feeling you look for will only be fleeting. Built on sand, easy to crumble.”

Yusuf looked nearly pitiful and Sebastien hated himself for being unable to resist not staining the mood with his own angst. Did Yusuf think he was speaking about this?

“It’s easier these days,” Sebastien continued, finding a strange gratification in laying everything bare for Yusuf, “easier to cope with, I suppose. Some realities are fixed. And you live with it.”

Sebastien did not pity himself, even if it was not immediately evident. Perhaps that much had changed for the better. But truths were still truths, no matter how sad they were to hear. He was lonely. Perhaps there was a part of him that always would be in a way that Yusuf couldn’t understand. It wasn’t either man’s fault, it was never a matter of blame. 

It wasn’t just that Yusuf had Nicolò, a person to share his existence with from beginning to end. Though that certainly was a factor. But Yusuf was a person that could never truly be alone. He couldn’t help himself, he befriended everyone from a client to the person holding open the door at a coffee shop. There was something so innate and unchanged by time about his connection to humanity that would never leave Yusuf. Sebastien could not lie and say it did not strike a pang of jealousy within him, to be able to drift through the ages and not feel the weight of quietness. 

They lay there for a moment, Sebastien finding a new form of comfort in Yusuf’s hair. Coils so expertly formed and dense that he didn’t think he could live without ever touching them again. Their bodies were warm, not overly so, while laid together. It was all so perfectly content that Sebastien forced himself to memorize the feeling if it were to never happen again. 

He became skilled in quiet goodbyes before they needed to be said.

“How did you know that I would want this?”

“Be specific.”

“You,” Sebastien gestured with a wave of his hand, “this.” 

Yusuf shrugged as if it were no matter, but it was Sebastien’s entire world.

“Some people need gentleness in ways that others don’t. Some need to be shown that could be a possibility.”

“And you knew that,” Sebastien said, “about me.”

“You came to Istanbul.”

“Because you told me to.”

“Yes.” 

It took almost nothing at all, but a glance and a grin, to set Sebastien’s blood alive with heat like a dormant forge. He had grown soft, somehow, in Yusuf’s hand but that swiftly changed when he was met with the long-forgotten sensation of lips and tongue. 

Yusuf worked over him with such dexterity, somehow knowing exactly how to make Sebastien shake beneath him. Maybe it was the amount of time since he’d had this that made him so newly sensitive. Or just the simple fact that it was a mouth in general on his dick and that always felt good. 

But the truth of it was, it was both of those things but so specifically that it was Yusuf. With one hand stroking him all over, the other pressing into his groin in the way even he forgot he liked. 

His friend was so beautiful, so full of just all-encompassing masculinity that made Sebastien feel shaken awake and born into a brand new world. The muscles in Yusuf’s shoulders and back moved beneath the spans of his skin, shifting and tensing. For a moment, Sebastien allowed himself to see Yusuf’s own dick, hard and untouched between his own thighs. It felt dangerous, too impossible, that Yusuf was hard from doing this to him. 

Would Yusuf let him return the favor if he asked?

His tongue curved around Sebastien’s dick in ways that his back arch to keep from thrusting. He forced himself still as if the whole act hinged on it. He was developing an obsession with the brush of Yusuf’s beard.

There was panting, someone’s. His own maybe. Lost in the chorus of mattress springs and a recent patter of rain against the window. 

Sebastien felt flung out of space and needed something to hold onto. The stiff sheets weren’t enough. He blindly reached for one of Yusuf’s hands and pulled it up to his chest. 

Can you feel it? He said in pressing the palm over his heart. Can you feel how alive I am, because of you?

He kissed the fingers, each one, a thank you in total. 

When Sebastien felt Yusuf’s nose press into his stomach, and the constricting heat of his wet throat quite literally drawing the life out of him, Sebastien gasped wetly against Yusuf’s hand. He did it again, and Sebastien couldn’t keep himself from folding his lips around Yusuf’s fingers once more. It was the same hand as before, he realized. 

Without seeing, he knew the act made Yusuf smile. The participation. He felt the approval in the squeeze of his thigh. Yusuf sucked him down deeper, so Sebastien did the same, and round and round it went. 

Yusuf felt so entirely unstoppable and Sebastien was committed to the act of pliancy. It was timed to the exact moment that Sebastien thought he wouldn’t be able to hang on another second when Yusuf pulled off his dick and claimed his mouth instead. It was a stunning fluidity of motion; Yusuf was suddenly gripping the back of Sebastien’s neck, mouth pressed against mouth, kneeling over his lap with a foot pressed against his side. 

Fingers gripped him again in a perfect up-down-all-fucking-over flurry of motion made so perfect from Yusuf’s spit and Sebastien’s own precome. 

There were kisses, quick snaps of lips and tongue, and then only breathing, in and out of one other. 

“Yusuf,” Sebastien pleaded, feeling close to crying. 

“Tell me, tell me.”

“Can I? Will you let me?” He had to ask. He had to be told.

Yusuf smiled wolfishly, twisting his wrist with purpose. “Please.”

Sebastien slung an arm around Yusuf’s neck as his body seized. 

Everything was so loud until it was incredibly quiet. Then he was being kissed again, between Yusuf’s palms cupping and petting his cheeks, as his body jerked with release and love. 

Stars were bursting across his skin like gentle kisses or misty rain as Yusuf kept his mouth so presently affixed to Sebastien’s skin. To his mouth, his chin, his throat and lower still. 

What was this adoration, except reward?

Yusuf had called him an aurochs, a beast of a man. And while that assessment had proven quite effective in combat, here he felt so very very small. It was as if Yusuf could just as easily fold him up and stick him in his pocket. 

Yusuf once told Sebastien of the secret pleasures that men denied themselves when they limited themselves in the ways of sex, especially modern then. Well, modern for the time. And while he sneered at the thought then, having assumed Yusuf meant in the ways he was with Nicolò, Sebastien was grateful that centuries later there was no I told you so.

It only occurred after Sebastien’s mind caught up with him, that the kisses on his stomach were Yusuf licking his torso clean of the mess they’ve made. He didn’t want to look, he couldn’t. It was embarrassing, it was too much. 

Sebastien hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until a clash of thunder rattled the window near the bed. He shook awake, heavy with sleep, but mind sharp and clear. Perhaps more so than it had ever been. A blanket covered him, not of his own doing. 

A sudden terror shook him, fueled by the quietness of the room, that he was alone. 

“He lives.” Yusuf was next to him, still just as unclothed as Sebastien was. “Did you think I’d left?”

Sebastien sat up, careful to keep at least a micro-line of space between them. “The thought did occur.”

Yusuf tsked and shook his head, there was amusement hanging in the background. There were a journal and pen on his lap, procured from somewhere. Words were scribbled on corners of the open page that Sebastien couldn’t quite recognize, no doubt something beautiful as that’s where poems were usually found. 

Between the words were quick etchings, studies that Sebastien quickly identified as himself. He looked away, his skin suddenly prickling hot. 

“May I ask you something, Yusuf?”

“Of course, Book.”

I’m Booker again.

“Why did you ask me to come to Istanbul?”

Yusuf sighed, closing the journal and setting it on his lap. His eyebrows did a funny thing that Sebastien always loved whenever he was in deep or perplexing thought or wanted to appear that way. 

“The short answer,” he said, “was that I missed you. The long answer was that Nicky was tired of me being sad and told me to do something about it.”

Sebastien frowned. “Missed me? I see you all the time.”

All of the commanding presence was gone from Yusuf. He was simply Joe again. 

“Ah well, you’re around but you’re not really, are you? Always got a foot out the door. Like I said, I missed you, prick.”

Yusuf kicked Sebastien’s foot from under the covers and they were smiling until they weren’t. 

“I feel like all I do these days is miss you. Funny how it works out.” 

Sebastien felt the idiot. So sure that he was expertly conspicuous in his self-assigned role that he couldn’t even feel the tiniest bit of pleasure at knowing he was missed. It all just felt so unexpectedly sad. 

“You disappear on us, Book,” Yusuf’s voice was low now. “You go so far away sometimes and it’s hard to find you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Yusuf shook his head. “I’m not asking for any apologies. I’m telling my friend that I love him, and I want him back.”

In a swelling surge of honesty, Sebastien said, “I think I’ve wanted you for a very long time, Yusuf. Forever, probably. But it didn’t hit me until I was away.”

Away. It was what they called it in the years of him being back. Sebastien needed to be away until it was time to come home. 

“And then it was like, what the fuck do I do with this?”

Sebastien dared himself to look at Yusuf who was looking back at him, eyes clear as the night. 

“Sometimes you remind me of Nicky so much,” Yusuf said, studying him. 

“How so?”

“It was hard for him, earlier on.” Yusuf chewed on a thought. “Reconciling what he wanted with what he thought he deserved. Like he was afraid of it. Never wanted to inconvenience anybody. There was once when he was just looking and he was so sorry I thought he’d never speak to me again.”

It was nearly impossible to comprehend. Nicolò, shy. Ashamed, even. Sebastien had never known him as anything other than a man so sure of himself and in his place in the world. Serious in the way that required no second-guessing and Sebastien wished he’d develop similar self-assurance. He wondered what must have changed for him; when once there was nothing and suddenly it was everything.

“Guess it was lucky for him,” Yusuf continued. “That I was looking at him too. And I’m looking at you.”

Sebastien kissed him so suddenly that he only briefly wondered if he was meant to ask. But he didn’t want to stop and Yusuf didn’t make him. It was the kind of kiss—the most innocent they’d shared thus far—that wasn’t meant to go any further than this. It was just the act of love that said what words couldn’t. 

Yusuf told him once, many years ago when Sebastien was drunk enough to ask, (and perhaps even in this same room), if he’d always liked men, if it was harder in the earlier part of history. He didn’t quite know what he was asking, if he wanted an honest answer. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to hear Yusuf speak. Sebastien had forgotten most of what Yusuf had said but he remembered the general gist about just knowing even as a child. If not in name (as words for those things changed so much over the years), then in feeling. 

Sebastien remembered feeling strangely jealous of a child. But of course, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Nicolò said something once about destiny. There wasn’t much that Sebastien still kept faith in, but maybe it was only meant to happen this way for him. 

“Hey, Basti,” Yusuf shook him awake again, then kissed his shoulder for good measure. 

“What?” Sebastien groaned into his pillow. 

“Made it to sunrise.”

Sebastien cracked an eye open and was sure he’d died. The new morning sun was cast through their room. Yusuf was golden and beautiful, bathed in light. It was blinding and Sebastien thought how lucky he was to be caught in the reflection of it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i just love booker a lot and i also love yusuf and i love their love. and yes i realized how much of a bottom babey i made booker and i stand by that gospel.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @patrocles


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